Christmas 2012

Happy New Year Everyone!

I've got a couple more days off work so I wanted to give you a brief glimpse of our Christmas season before I'm buried under a mountain of work next week. 

 

Thanksgiving weekend, after returning from Heidelberg (see a previous post) we put up the decorations including decorating our tree.  It's always fun to relive memories as we put all the ornaments up and add a couple of new ones from our travels and the girls' handiwork in kindergarten.

The next weekend it was off to the Esslingen Christmas market about 30 minutes from our town.  We had some fresh snow that made for a chilly, but fun day.

 

Ellie getting ready to launch herself with the Esslingen Cathedral in the background.  Stopping by the Cathedral was a key element of the day ... both to warm up and give Mommy a chance to feed Miranda.

 

In most German cathedrals there's a wall for posting prayers on index cards.  The girls have enjoyed participating in this tradition.

 

Any Christmas market includes an obligatory stop at the carousel, but this time Kate pinched her finger while getting in the car leading to the pictured scene.  You would have thought she'd just had her leg amputated without anesthetic.  All we (and the rest of the locals) could do was hide a little smile as they whirled around.

 

Christmas eve morning brought a chance for Mommy to sleep in while Daddy made a breakfast of pancakes and sausage.  Unfortunately Daddy stepped on the scale yesterday and the pancakes looked like they were still there.

 

Miranda enjoyed Christmas Eve too.  As a matter of fact, she seems to enjoy almost everything, smiling frequently, except when we keep trying (unsuccessfully) to get her to take a bottle.

 

Here's the family getting ready for the Chrismas Eve service.  Unfortunately Ellie was recovering from a fever so we had to skip spending the evening with friends, but we still had fun that evening at home.

 

 

Christmas morning is very exciting when you've got little girls in the house.  Here's Ellie delving into a new book while Kate displays a new Lego set.

 

Here are the girls sporting new PJ's, hats, and scarfs.

 

Mommy and Daddy got the girls scooters. We're been scooting around the neighborhood ever since.

 

 

The week after Christmas we went with some friends up to Sea Life Park in Speyer. It wasn't quite the Monterey Bay Acquarium, but we all had fun just the same.

 

 

We also discovered that Speyer's Christmas market was still going on.  So it was off through the city for more bratwurst and gluwein.  Here Kate's having a little better time on the carosoel next to her friend Taylor. 

 

Here are the kids getting excited about some ballon creations.  One by one, they got popped from being brushed against the ground leading to a few tears and some futile attempts to negotiate a trade of a popped balloon for whole one with the other kids. 

 

 

Speyer has one of the biggest cathedrals in Germany ... large enough that it is surrounded by an external protective wall with large turrets.  The cathedral itself is in the background. 

 

 

The Speyer Cathedral was a huge beautiful building with imprssive stone work, but with a rather spartain interior.  The city was originally founded by the Romans in about 10 BC and the cathedral includes the tombs of eight Roman emperors and German kings.

 

All in all it's been a great break.  It's just too bad I've actually got to go back to work in a few days.  Hope you enjoyed sharing a piece of our holiday.